Carlinville’s big run buries Piasa Birds

CARLINVILLE – When Carlinville’s Megan Stayton rotated back to serve, the Southwestern Piasa Birds retained hope of a South Central Conference volleyball upset.

Stayton and the Cavaliers quickly quashed those aspirations.

With Stayton ripping off a 12-point service run, Carlinville closed out the first set and freshman Alyssa DeSpain opened the second set with another 12-point serving streak and the Cavs put away the Birds 25-10, 25-15 in a 38-minute match at The Big House on West Main.

“Megan Stayton had fun serving and we couldn’t run an offense,” Southwestern coach Julie Kinser said. “We’re not as big and dominant as Carlinville, but I felt like we should have produced a little more than what we did.”

Carlinville, the defending SCC champion, improved to 6-4 and 4-0 in the SCC. All four defeats came to large schools – Minooka, Breese Mater Dei, Rockwood (Mo.) Marquette and Chatham Glenwood – at the Edwardsville Tiger Classic. Southwestern is 4-7 and 1-4 in the SCC.

It is a one-sided rivalry – Carlinville is 73-6 vs. Southwestern in girls volleyball – but 35-year Cavaliers coach Fran Struble remains wary of the Birds.

“Playing Southwestern is always a tough one,” Struble said. “They are just all over the court picking up balls and they have some girls who take good swings. We always look at Southwestern as something really tough.”

The Birds were tough early, battling back from an 11-6 deficit to trail 13-10 in the first set. But a Kathleen Kelly kill put the Cavs up 14-10 and sent Stayton to the line to begin a 25-0 run that spanned two sets and two servers in Stayton and DeSpain.

“Tonight, we were really just connecting as a team,” Carlinville setter Carley Kulenkamp said. “You could tell we were all just on our ‘A’ game. We were all connecting. We were passing, sets were there, hits were there, serves were there, we were really playing together. We knew we had each other’s backs at all times.”

Kelly had 10 kills, Talesha Scott had nine kills and Stayton added five for the Cavaliers, who took advantage of Southwestern’s inability to get many clean swings.

“They run a quick offense, they have big hitters and any time they get a chance to put the ball right up on the net, you know it’s going to do down,” Kinser said of the Cavs. “We struggled serve receive tonight and had to run an offense behind the 10-foot line. That created a lot of free balls.”

And that created a lot of setting options for Kulenkamp. Carlinville’s 12-0 surge to start the second set included eight kills – five by Kelly and three by Stayton – and block assists from Kelly and Kulenkamp. Birds chances at the net were few with Maddy Greeling putting down all three of her team’s kills in the second set.

“Southwestern has great hitters when they have the pass there,” Kulenkamp said. “So that was kind of a key, get them out of system, get them free balling because that’s when we do well, when we can set up and get our plays running.”